than 1,100 college students for eight
years, found that those who smoked marijuana tended to skip more classes. The more frequent their
marijuana use, the more often they
missed class. Those skipped classes, in turn,
were linked to a lower grade point
average and delayed graduation. The findings, published in the journal Psychology of Addictive
Behaviors, do not prove that marijuana use was the root cause of
students' academic struggles. But lead researcher Amelia Arria
said her team accounted for a range
of other factors, including students'
drinking and other drug use;
involvement in sports and other
extracurricular activities, and psychological factors such as
depression. They also measured some
personality traits, like the tendency
to act impulsively to seek
"sensation," said Arria, an associate
professor of behavioral and
community health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. "We think that skipping-class
variable is an important finding,"
Arria said. Besides the obvious effect that
would have on grades, it may reflect
a broader attitude among college
students who regularly smoke pot,
said Arria. "We think they may be less engaged
in college life, and may not be taking
advantage of all the opportunities it
presents," she said. Paul Armentano, deputy director of
the nonprofit organization NORML,
said it's impossible to pin the missed
classes on pot, specifically. "Correlation is not causation, and it
would not appear that there is
anything unique to cannabis
[marijuana] that would cause those
who experiment with it to skip
classes," said Armentano, whose group advocates for legal marijuana
use. Instead, he said, it's more likely that
other traits - a student's tendency to
"rebel" or act against "authority," for
instance - are at work. That said, Armentano added, "our
society ideally wants to encourage
young people to make healthy
lifestyle choices, which includes
mitigating their use of intoxicants
and being able to discern between use and abuse." The findings are based on University
of Maryland students, who were
followed starting in their freshman
year. As freshmen, 37 percent said
they'd smoked marijuana at least
once in the past 30 days -- the average being six days of the
month. Arria's team found that in general,
the more often those freshmen used
pot, the more often they skipped
class. Skipped classes, in turn,
tended to translate into a lower GPA
and longer time to graduation. Over time, if students decreased
their pot smoking, grades tended to
rebound, the study found. But when
pot smoking increased, GPAs
tended to drop as well. To Arria, the findings suggest that
college academic help centers
should be aware that there's a
connection between pot use and
student performance. Also Read: Australian anti- marijuana campaign provokes
giggles "When students go to an academic
assistance office, rarely does
anyone ask them about alcohol or
drug use," Arria said. Simply asking students about it
might be enough to raise their
awareness, she said. "Students often see marijuana as
benign," Arria noted. "But if you ask
them questions like, 'How often are
you smoking marijuana, drinking,
partying?' - that alone may help them
be more self-reflective and make better choices." Parents, too, should be aware of the
connection between marijuana and
skipped classes, Arria said:
"Parents need to know that their
investment in college could be
compromised by marijuana use." She also suggested that
policymakers keep it in mind. "They
may want to put academic
consequences on the list of things to
consider when they're deciding
whether to make marijuana more available," Arria said. Armentano had his own take on the
policy implications. "These findings
reinforce the need for sensible
cannabis regulations that seek to
better discourage the use of
cannabis and the ready access of cannabis by young people," he said.
"That's a goal that criminal cannabis
prohibition has failed to successfully
achieve."
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moralemike07
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